What
most people do not know is that slavery still exists. It
is not a thing of the past. His Royal Highness The
Duke of Gloucester, GCVO (a cousin of the Queen), has
remarked:

“Many
people would assume that at the end of the 20th century
the Anti-Slavery Society would be a mere footnote in the
history books”.

We
all know the story of how William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
would frequently introduce a private member’s Bill to
abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. Each
time it was defeated until, finally, in 1833, as he lay on
his deathbed, word was brought to him that the House of
Commons had finally given a third reading to a Bill
abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire. We
also know that the 13th Amendment to the US Bill of Rights
following the Civil War (1861-1865) resulted in the
abolition of slavery throughout the USA.

Although
there is no longer any state which recognizes, or which
will enforce, a claim by
a person to a right of property over another, the
abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to
exist. There are
millions of people throughout the world — mainly
children — in conditions of slavery, as well as in
various forms of servitude which are in many respects
similar to slavery.

The
Society's Secretary-General, while undertaking overseas
Missions on behalf of the Society, met and interviewed
numerous slaves and bonded laborers, many of them young
children, in Africa and Asia. You can read summaries
of his reports from those Missions on various pages on
this site.

The
Society's Secretary-General found that child slavery —
one of the worst aspects of modern slavery — still
exists today and is increasing. As His Royal Highness
observed, “[c]ontrary to popular belief, slavery, as
defined by the United Nations, is a growing problem.”